People have many options today for creating their own estate planning documents. Forms can be purchased quickly from websites and books. However, trying to create your own estate plan can actually be more expensive than hiring an attorney. While most of us would not try to do our own heart surgery or root canal, other […]

If you die unexpectedly, should your “digital assets” like text messages, e-mail and photos die with you? One cold night in December 2013, Jake Anderson left a party near the University of Minnesota campus and was inexplicably later found frozen to death in his car. The medical examiner ruled the death accidental, so there is […]

Building a successful business takes hard work, careful planning and significant foresight. When a business has been able to maintain its success for a significant period of time, owners and/or executives must begin the task of succession planning. Family owned and operated businesses face particular challenges in this area. Building a family business is hard […]

“So don’t give away your money. There are other things you can do ahead of time. Talk to an elder law attorney to make sure you are maximizing your dollars, that you can still give your kids some kind of inheritance and still go into a skilled nursing home on Medicaid.” A recent article in […]

“An irrevocable trust is a trust generally created during someone’s lifetime that is exactly what it says — it can’t be revoked.” Tom Benson and his grandchildren are in a fight over the ownership of the New Orleans Saints NFL football team and the New Orleans Pelicans NBA basketball team after his death. The family […]

State Rep. Shawn Dooley is proposing a cut in the state estate tax as a way of keeping older residents and their assets in Massachusetts. Many non-professionals plan for the federal estate tax, but fail to account for the estate tax in their own states. This often leaves an unintended and unnecessary bill that must […]

The president proposes to tax capital gains at death rather than allow them to pass income-tax free to heirs as under current law. Did you catch President Obama’s State of the Union address last week? Make note of these interesting estate planning developments. President Obama rode into office, in part, by promising to increase taxes […]

For clients who have a collection of firearms, they can bring them into their estate plan and ensure they go to the right beneficiaries via a gun trust.  What will happen to your gun collection when you pass? Do you have plans to gift the firearms to your heirs? Most gun collectors know the laws […]

Thomas Gilbert Jr. is accused of murdering his own father, a wealthy New York hedge fund founder who was fatally shot earlier this month. Could Gilbert inherit some of the fortune of the man he is accused of killing? Under the terms of his father’s estate plan, Thomas Gilbert Jr. is set to inherit a […]

A Queens woman loves her pet Maltese so much that she rewrote her will to leave the pooch a million-dollar fortune consisting of jewelry, a trust fund and vacation home. All a dog needs is a chew toy and a million dollar doghouse, right? So it is with Bell Mia, millionaire Maltese. It is often a good […]